I have applied for a residence permit based on family ties in July,2016. Two months later, I was told by the Finnish embassy that my case will be handled in two-three months. After three months, i.e. in 30th of December, 2016, I was told that my case has been recently moved to the second stage of processing. By now a month of processing has passed and I heard nothing. Is this normal?

Thanks,

Last edited by mike solon on Tue May 02, 2017 4:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Residence Permit "family ties"

roger_roger wrote:
I think so.... isn't the normal processing time is 9 months on average? So, you are getting there

I know that the average is 9 months and I know the processing time is devided to Three steps: 1. when the application is pending, it is the first stage. ( It's the longest period). Then the handling stage, which has started since the beginning of January. Finally, making the decision stage is the last one.

Does it take a lot of time to handle a case and take a decision? They have started handling my application since the beginning of January and untill today I have heard nothing

Another point to mention is that I read about cases where the handling and taking the decision took no more than two weeks.

This was not our experience. My husband applied in June 2016 based on family ties. He initially requested an effective date of 02.01.17. Sometime in late 2016 we were asked if the date was still good. We requested to change the date to 30.04.17 because we aren't able to move as quickly as we had initially hoped. The permit arrived in the mail a couple of weeks ago.

I don't know if this is pertinent or not: The initial application was made at the Finnish Consulate in NYC. I am a Finnish Citizen.

Comparing waiting times is absolutely useless on individual cases. Be it family ties RP, student RP, or a citizenship application.

The same size in online forums is rarely above 5, and in large threads it might get to 20, which is still very bad to deduce any kind of useful information. There are so many variables at play in individual cases that people end up doing themselves a disservice by sitting and comparing with other people; if you're waiting for a decision, you'll end up either with false hope if someone else got his decision fast, or with false stress if it takes someone else too long.

Every f*cking case is unique. You can't measure the result of your application based on arbitrary anecdotes online. Stop being a moron!

Hi, so I'm a Finnish citizen and currently studying. I plan to get married with my boyfriend so that he can move to Finland and live with me. I want to ask you guys if you know whether getting married in Finland would speed up the residence permit based on family ties?

We think of 2 situations:

1. We get married in our home country and proceed the residence permit based on family ties for him
2. He comes to Finland and gets married with me in Finland and apply for the residence permit

Which one will be procceeded faster? I myself doubt if it makes any difference but he insists that there would be different like in some cases in the States

There is no differences in processing of the residence permit where your marriage is done, as long as marriage is registered into population register for you.
If you marry abroad you can do that registration at any Finnish embassy or consulate with a simple one page form.